Tragedy is one of the highest presumed orders. Hughes has written a tragedy, and a very successful one; Fenton another; and Pope none. Did any man, however,--will even Mr. Bowles himself,--rank Hughes and Fenton as poets above _Pope_? Was even Addison (the author of Cato), or Rowe (one of the higher order of dramatists as far as success goes), or Young, or even Otway and Southerne, ever raised for a moment to the same rank with Pope in the estimation of the reader or the critic, before his death or since? If Mr. Bowles will contend for classifications of this kind, let him recollect that descriptive poetry has been ranked as among the lowest branches of the art, and description as a mere ornament, but which should never form the "subject" of a poem. The Italians, with the most poetical language, and the most fastidious taste in Europe, possess now five _great_ poets, they say, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and, lastly, Alfieri[1]; and whom do they esteem one of the highest of these, and some of them the very highest? Petrarch the _sonneteer_: it is true that some of his Canzoni are _not less_ esteemed, but _not_ more; who ever dreams of his Latin Africa? [Footnote 1: Of these there is one ranked with the others for his SONNETS, and _two_ for compositions which belong to _no class_ at all? Where is Dante? His poem is not an epic; then what is it? He himself calls it a "divine comedy;" and why? This is more than all his thousand commentators have been able to explain. Ariosto's is not an _epic_ poem; and if poets are to be _classed_ according to the _genus_ of their poetry, where is he to be placed? Of these five, Tasso and Alfieri only come within Aristotle's arrangement, and Mr. Bowles's class-book. But the whole position is false. Poets are classed by the power of their performance, and not according to its rank in a gradus. In the contrary case, the forgotten epic poets of all countries would rank above Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, Burns, Gray, Dryden, and the highest names of various countries. Mr. Bowles's title of "_invariable_ principles of poetry," is, perhaps, the most arrogant ever prefixed to a volume. So far are the principles of poetry from being "_invariable_," that they never were nor ever will be settled. These "principles" mean nothing more than the predilections of a particular age; and every age has its own, and a different from its predecessor. It is now Homer, and now Virgil; once Dryden, and since Walter Scott; now Corneille, and now Racine; now Crebillon, now Voltaire. The Homerists and Virgilians in France disputed for half a century. Not fifty years ago the Italians neglected Dante--Bettinelli reproved Monti for reading "that barbarian;" at present they adore him. Shakspeare and Milton have had their rise, and they will have their decline. Already they have more than once fluctuated, as must be the case with all the dramatists and poets of a living language. This does not depend upon their merits,